


The Wall Around Lisbeth Salander

by vogue91



Category: Millennium Trilogy - Stieg Larsson
Genre: Book 3, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 02:50:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14034519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: Kalle Blomkvist made her feel uncomfortable, a feeling she hated. She didn’t know why, but that look in his eyes made her fill with hatred. It wasn’t the usual disgusted stare or, worse, of pity. It was curious, as if in his mind he was trying to bare her of her every qualm.





	The Wall Around Lisbeth Salander

Son of a bitch. While she laid, covered in dirt, bruises and her own blood, the first thought that hit her with an incredible violence was that Zala and her were somehow bound to each other.

He wasn’t her family, yet biology had screwed her once again, almost screaming her that he was her father, and that she was never going to run away from that crappy reality.

Her breath became shorter, as much as she tried not to waste air. She knew she didn’t have a lot of time left, that her strength were irreparably abandoning her.

 

~

 

Still laying on the ground, still covered in blood. Still with the looks of a living dead. But not for long, she knew her end was close.

But now there was something different on her face, twisted in a sly smile. She had realized that what had been tormenting her for years had brought an end to that sort of mission with which she had felt invested, and that she had failed when she was just a baby.

What had condemned her to be a pariah, that had her always made her feel life she was guarding a secret that no one else was supposed to know.

Zalachenko laid a few feet from her, an axe sunk in his cranium, witness to his last act in that life.

She closed her eyes, waiting with anxiety that death would come and steal her from that atrocious pain. Her thoughts wandered to uncharted land, when they stopped violently on a face.

_Damned Kalle Blomkvist._

_She was laying in that bed, as if she could somehow feel a danger that didn’t actually exists. Hedestad was horribly cold, but she refused to wrap herself in blankets, anxious that he could take it as a sign._

_When he put a hand on her shoulder, she sat up abruptly. She looked at him as if he was a dog and stood up, getting back to her room._

_That man, she decided, overestimated sex. And she wasn’t going to pretend to be for him something more than the occasional fuck, consumed in the cold and darkness, in a place forgotten by God and men._

_Kalle Blomkvist made her feel uncomfortable, a feeling she hated. She didn’t know why, but that look in his eyes made her fill with hatred. It wasn’t the usual disgusted stare or, worse, of pity. It was curious, as if in his mind he was trying to bare her of her every qualm._

_Well, let him go mad. Lisbeth had no intention to help him that way, nor she would’ve let him uncover the mystery she represented._

_There was nothing to understand, and even if there was, she wasn’t the kind of girl to let a man she barely knew psychoanalyse her. She had just slept with him following a momentarily inspiration._

_Blomkvist would’ve learnt soon to know Lisbeth Salander, but not in a way he would’ve liked._

She had saved his life in Hedestad. She kept telling herself that it didn’t matter, that she had done so just out of revenge toward Martin Vagner, revenge for all those women that after having arrived home had never see the sun again.

And yet somehow, she felt like she owed something to that man.

For him she had become an obsession, and she was sorry for that, in a way. She had learnt all too soon that whomever got close to her ended up burning himself pretty bad with that fire she loved to play with, with that risk coming from a clandestine life and from basically zero morality.

She couldn’t say where that remorse came from, that insane desire to say her last words to him, to tell him she was sorry for having cut him out, for never having let him see her for who she truly was.

She groaned thinking how much he was going to drive himself crazy after her death, how much he would’ve entrenched in a guilt that had no reason to exist. Mentally, she said she was sorry for all of that, but she knew that even if she had been able to apologize in person he would’ve never felt at peace with himself.

_What do you want from me, damned Kalle Blomkvist?_

She had asked herself that very same question many times since she’d first met him, and she still couldn’t find an answer. That man could have whatever he desired, he was professionally accomplished and he had his fair success with women. And yet he kept stubbornly chasing after her, as if all his existence depended on her.

Lisbeth had reached the conclusion that she was like a drug for him, and she didn’t like that feeling at all.

She knew all too well it wasn’t love, from neither of them. Simply, she had learnt from her childhood that love didn’t have a reason to exist in a world where it couldn’t be a bargaining chip. It was constantly sacrificed to get something more, and she refused to give in to such a triviality.

The only person she had ever loved was her mother, and now that love was perfectly useless. But he had always tried to make her forget all her qualms, to destroy in a few months a wall she had built during the years.

 

_“Lisbeth?” he was in front of her, staring at her like one would an animal of which he can’t understand the true nature. She didn’t answer, nor he actually thought she would. During those weeks he had learnt to understand that Lisbeth Salander spoke only when she wanted to, when she had something to say, and not because she was asked to._

_It was frustrating and he had accepted that, but it didn’t mean that he had stopped trying. She found it incredibly annoying, but never her face had shown signs of that. Her expression had always kept unchanged, since a very long time now._

_“I suppose you don’t want to talk about last night, do you?” the girl was tempted to smile for how that over forty years old man could sound so adolescent, but she didn’t._

_It was all part of an armour that she was never going to stop wearing._

And he knew about that armour, even though it wasn’t clear to him why it was there. But despite that, he had always stayed.

In those last moments, those last breaths of life, she hated him with all herself, for the only reason that he cared about her. Insufferable, an so little credible.

_I’m sorry, Kalle Blomkvist, but you’ve put your money on the wrong horse._

She finally let go to a smile that no one was ever going to see.

Her eyes closed, and suddenly breathing wasn’t natural anymore. She decided she didn’t want to make much of an effort, but to let life abandoning her slowly, without her feeling the need to fight to keep it.

Before she passed out she saw an indefinite shape on the door. She recognized him for a moment, before darkness wrapped her.

 _Hi, damned Kalle Blomkvist._  


End file.
